Nurse gone mad!

It's the management, administration and bureaucracy in HSE that I disagree with, not the front line staff.

Sorry, all the public sector will have to take a pay cut, starting with those at the top, who get cut the most and finishing at the bottom who will be cut the least.

wheresthebeef wrote: »

I've been driven to start a blog about public servants, in particular, Nurses being made to feel guilty for working in the public service. I may have gone a bit mad, but i'm at my wits end with frustration at people trying to make me feel guilty for earning my wage working for the HSE. Feel free to check it out www.nursewave.info

Dave
The Angry Nurse

Well said!

Nurse pay needs to drop not because it's fair or just but because the country can't afford the current public sector pay bill. So we either cut jobs or cut wages in the short term and in the medium term look towards restructuring the pay public services are delivered.

Pay needs to be cut, or hours cut. Either achieves the same outcome.

Tree wrote: »

Cutting front line staff affects services, ALL services

Sure, cutting the pay of front line staff doesn't though. Also, we may be forced into cutting front line staff if the fiscal situation doesn't improve.

dooferoaks wrote: »

We are already cutting front line staff, nurses are already losing jobs. Beds are being closed, less nurses are needed to cover the ward, they are on temporary contracts which are not renewed. Numbers of Doctors are being reduced in teams, less interns are being taken on/trained in hospitals.

Full time staff haven't been left go though, just "temporary"/contract staff no?

Tree wrote: »

Temp/contract staff account for far more of the health service than you'd think. They're the lads that allow backlogs to be caught up on, full time wise the hse is understaffed on the front line

Oh, I fully appreciate. More that we have two public sectors, one with guaranteed jobs (kinda) and one with temp/contract staff with far fewer benefits etc. Hiring of the latter is mostly because of how difficult it is to reduce numbers of the former as well as the costs of the benefits they've got, pensions etc.

imported_guy wrote: »

depends on where you work, one junior doctor may be working his butt off the 100 hours, if he has admissions lined up 24/7 (highly unlikely, doesnt happen often that your on your feet for the 24 hours on call), another one might be "working" a 100 hours but sleeping alot of them off if there are no admissions etc, they still get paid because they are "on call" and have to wake up if a call comes, and be ready.

You really have no clue and should stop posting about hypothetical situations because you have no experience of the reality of this

I have done this for over 15 years along with others who post here and your statements are so inaccurate as to almost lead me to believe you are some sort of HSE mole

Working 100 hours is unsafe fullstop

The HSE are trying to reduce hours where they can, why then would they have someone "sleeping" while they work in a hospital it just doesnt make sense

As regards your highly unlikely I used to work full weekends on call in my early days, Friday, Saturday, sunday and go home monday evening at 7pm, every 4th weekend, as well as the outline 8am-7pm week days and one on call the week you had the weekend as well

In teh year there I can remember two weekends where I didnt sleep, didnt eat for from Saturday night until monday morning because in that place there was no one to take blood at weekends and you had to do that job as well as staffing the casualty and seeing all the patients on the wards wasnt safe for me of for them. I am glad now getting older I dont work like that and people dont have to work like that as I would not like my family to have to rely on medical care like that

You should really confine your comments to something you actually know about

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

I was told this on a control-and-restraint course I was sent on. Size doesn't matter, we were told, and I (5'4") was teamed up with a guy who played GAA for his county (6' something - I couldn't see that high). Anyway, he was the "aggressive patient" and I launched myself at him in the prescribed manner, in order to restrain and control him. My head vanished into his armpit and my hands weren't big enough to circumscribe his wrists. We ended up in a heap laughing and the instructors stopped using the 'size doesn't matter' mantra for the rest of the course. They also gave me 'troublesome patients' who were smaller in size for the rest of the time.

Yeah it's truly bull****. Without a lot of training it's very hard to deal with someone who's substantially taller, heavier and stronger than you if they are sober and you aren't allowed to hit them with something heavy. Even with someone your own size it can be bloody hard to restrain them without hurting them.

mikemac wrote: »

Strenght has nothing to do with turning over a patient. The weakest nurse can turn over the heaviest patient.
I saw this on a first aid course when the fire service demonstrated.
It's not about strenght but about technique.

If you've not done manual handling, demand a course from management

Ah yes, seeing a video is clearly a great substitute for actually having to do the job on a daily basis. The constant bending on the job, which is inevitable for pretty much all workers, before you even mention the tough physical work to lift and turn a patient takes it's toll very quickly. You would be amazed how many healthcare workers are receiving ortho and physio treatment for what seem like simple tasks. I prolapsed a disc 2 days after finishing a cardiac locum job in a dept where the chief thought it was perfectly adequate to do outpatient ECG's on a chair. Not much of a clinic morning where I could be seeing 40 patients was spent upright and was a complete disservice to both staff and patients. My back flares up from kneeling and bending to do children's EEG's and my right shoulder cracks continuously from reaching around patient's heads and from having to head roll or roll completely unconscious ones who are effectively a dead weight to move. My OH has had repeated physio on his left shoulder from doing echo's left handed, even in the dept's with ergonomic right handed couches, a lot of CT's who do echo's on a full time basis will need physio from reaching around patients especially if they're small in stature. Try doing the job and then see how much of that video you believe.